"What message, Lil' Squeak?"

UTEP Detective Fiction Class, Fall 2004.

"Why you still be ho'in for the man?"

Robert Parker's Double Deuce

"Why you still be ho'in for that 'Talian trash, Sam Albanese?"

Reader Response Exercise

"'An for that honkey mama white nigger ho-lawyer, Doyle?"

[As in the preceeding exercise, the students start with the last three lines or so of the final chapter in the novel, then they add their own ending to it. The two sections are merely seperated by asterisks *** . Yours truly = Spenser, as in Spenser for Hire. In the original, expanded version, new characters whose comments are followed by website citations are actual Boston-area personalities making cameo appearances as themselves.]

Alone.

I could feel myself smiling. Gant spiked a double into the left-fieled corner. I took another sip and spoke aloud in the dark room.

"Perfect," I said (Parker - 230).

*** **** *** **** **** ***** ******* ******** ***

I guess you can say I really wasn't too surprised when Marcus and Billy were turned loose again. Although our kid Major's testimony helped the DA to give them what time they actually got.

Hawk took care of him. You can be sure of that. And the next thing you know Major Johnson was the center of attention. Of about as tense a conference as you can imagine.

Susan, Hawk and yours truly were present. So, too, were Erin Macklin and two movers and shakers from Boston's drug rehab scene. And one from the state capitol.
Come to think of it, so was Pearl. After al, the meeting was in Susan's house.

Not mine!

For all Pearl got to share time with me, too.

As for these movers and shakers? Well. I guess you could say they were straight out of a real-deal website. Deborah Kline Walker, for example, was the incoming associate director for the Massachusetts State Department of Public Health.

No telling how Hawk ever pulled that one off. Especially after telling Sam Albanese, one of the "suits" from the Housing Authority, that "We the Arthur D. Little of hired thugdom. (Parker-107)."

Susan claimed later that this whiz-bang of a meeting grew out of a tip that Hawk had from some local gang banger. And that tip was dynamite. It seems that Albanese's tame attorney, Doyle, was involved in some misdemeanor sex solicitation mess with the NYPD vice squad.

And then Hawk had followed the whole thing up with a one on one with Major's old social worker, Arlene Rodriguez.

What made things so bad for Albanese and he rest of his suits was the fact that the lawyer Doyle incident involved a male teenage hooker in drag over on 76th and Broadway, down south from Boston a ways in the Big Bad Apple.

I guess that meant that the Housing Authority's number one legal eagle was what black cons call a down low people at heart. For all he wasn't black. much less that he'd spent half his lifetime behind bars as an aggressive alpha male who still thought of himself as straight.

The clincher was that friend Doyle had tried to get Albanese's name into the picture in an attempt to put the NYPD vice cop off her stride. She'd caught both characters red handed off in a corner of an alley someplace nearby, and demanded identification.

Doyle's efforts didn't work.

At least not until the case made it to the Manhattan Deputy DA level.

When I wondered aloud how it all came together Susan casually went on to say how she'd just so happened to run into Arlene Rodriguez at some White Castle a while back. Most likely it was the one across the road from Witch Craft Heights ISD headquarters, on the same side of the road as Salem Elementary.

Talk about black magic.

Over lunch Arlene had told her that the kid in question was from Hobart territory right here in Boston Town. That his street name was Lil' Squeak, and that he was really upset by being turned down for membership in Major's gang. Arlene went on to say that she'd been given the little punk's referral from social worker in the NYPD's juvenile division.

It seemed to Susan that Arlene didn' t like the way the Manhattan DA office had blown off the misdemeanor sex solicitation rap, and had suggested that maybe Susan might like to pass all the information on to Hawk.

Susan did.

But neither she nor Hawk had thought to mention it to me. Makes a guy wonder sometimes.

Anyway, that would have been all that Hawk needed.

Because it gave him all the muscle required to do some serious influence peddling on Major Johnson's account.

As for Deborah Kline Walker, she jumped right into it from ground zero.

"We believe there is no silver bullet that is going to cure this problem," she said ( www.mapine.org/drugnews ).

I couldn't help but wince, since it was like she was sending a message to Hawk with the word "bullet."

But Hawk seemed not to hear it. Instead he went from casual alert to hyper alert.

The problem for us, anyway wasn't Deborah's big picture. It was the kid's inherited drug problem. Arlene Rodriguez had told me all that. Starting with her declaration to me, "Major is his real name," (Parker-29), she'd given it to me straight.

Finally, once everybody had had their say, it was quiet. Dead quiet.

Even Pearl looked up in bewilderment at the stunned silence.

She had been quietly taking advantage of Susan's obvious involvement in all the conversations going on around us..

And she had done so by placidly chewing on a steak bone I'd brought along with me as a special treat. And drooling all over Susan's carpet as she did so.

So, why had I brought it for her in the first place?

I guess you might say that it was just one of those guy things. Goes along with being both male and impulsive.

Now it was for Deborah Kline Walker to have the last word, and to break the spell.

Her sound bite for all time was "We need all the options we can get," ( www.mapine.org/drugnews ). She was right . We all knew it. Major Johnson knew it.

Lucky for him, though, he was the only one not there.

Hawk had stashed him for the evening at Jackie's house. Don't ask me why. You know Hawk.

But Hawk was still Hawk.

So nobody what he thought.

As it was he merely stood up and stretched.

"Well, I guess we'd better go to Jackie's house and pick up Major. It's a pretty fair drive we be hav'in tonight. To get him outta town, to someplace safe. Spenser and me."

Meanwhile at Jackie's house the doorbell rang.

Jackie practically jumped out of her chair as she ran to the door with some cash in her hand.

"Major, honey, I just can't believe how fast those pizza delivery people are tonight. It seems like I just hung up the phone this instant. Better hope that Hawk and Spence don't take too long either, else our pizza and Buffalo wings are going to get cold, dear."

This last she tossed over her shoulder as she unlocked the deadbolts.

Alarmed, all his street smarts in overdrive, Major, too, was already out of his chair and in a half crouch.

Too late!

Beause no sooner had Jackie unlatched the security chain then the the door flew open.

And in pranced a foppish little creature dressed up in drag to out shine some fairy queen in a UTEP MUSL 1327 History of Jazz to Rock and Roll video.

Mascara, pancke makeup, mincing steps, the whole nine-yards. Even his eyes looked like they were oscillating round and round in opposite directions, only in his case he didn't need trick photography to have the effect.

Damn.

Was he ever scary.

A pizza delivery baseball cap was on his head sidewise. It had the logo of something called the UTEP Home Boy Pizza Delivery Service on it. More, he had a garish looking tee-shirt with what looked like some such lazer-printed gibberish on it as "¡Ora, UTEP! ¡Ora, MEChA!"

Never had either Jackie nor Major even seen such a combination of tee-shirt and baseball cap. Not in all of Boston. They stared in amazement. It was only then that they noticed something else.

For all he was wearing a lopsided grin, this pizza delivery person was packing no pizza nor was he packing Buffalo wings. Instead, he was packing a bright, shiny-new Tech-9.

With one skinny hand he casually shoved Jackie right to the floor, snarling in a falsetto voice as he did so, "Outta my way, ho!"

Still grinning he went on, "That meskin ho Arlene let slip where all you 'alls be hid'in. Arlene my new juvenile counselor."

Then with a truly devilish smile of malicous triumph he chortled in fiendish glee. "'An my main man Willie put the alligator clips and lil' black box onto all you 'alls 'phone line yeatserday, so's we could be listen'in in."

"Why?" Jackie managed to gasp.

"Shut up, ho! This here man's business!" He screeched.

"'Lil Squeak! What this all about?" Major demanded furiously.

"Got a message from Sam and Doyle for Hawk, home." Squeak continued to ignore Jackie and stared straight in Major's direction as he said this, for all his eyes kept going round and round in opposite directions, often times leaving only the whites showing.

But for Major this was a defining moment. He had always had a grudging respect and fascination with Hawk. In a certain way you might say he was determined not to let Hawk down now.

Now his time had come, Major showed no fear. His anger was barely controlled. "What message, Lil' Squeak? Why you still be ho'in for the man? Why you still be ho'in for that 'Talian trash, Sam Albanese? 'An for that honkey mama white nigger ho-lawyer, Doyle? Why you be lett'in 'em set you up for?"

Lil' Squeak casually swung the muzzle of the Tech-9 until it was centered on Major's chest. "I ain't be ho'in no more for the man, home, you dig? I got me my main man Willie instead!" He seemed to straigthen himself up defiantly as he huffed.

"What it is, home, now I got my main man Willie, you might say that now we got each other, we both be ho'in."

He proclaimed this last in a sort of perversely touching pride in his recent social accomplishment.

For Lil' Squeak, human bondage to his main man Willie would have been the closest he'd ever been to any kind of serious relationship, whether with another person of his own or of the opposite sex.

Then, the teenager blurted out the last lines of his short lived and miserable career as an underage contract killer.

"Home, now it time for you mewssage to take to that white man's nigger Hawk, cool? 'An the message gonna be you, home!" By now 'Lil Squeaks voice was well-nigh hysterical. Jackie lay convulsively weeping on the floor. Major's face was now a portrait of mixed consternation and resolve.

His last hour had truly come. Major knew it.

But.

No sooner had Lil' Squeak piped out his final threat -- "'Cause we gonna whang you, fro!" -- then he gave out a sound midway between a grunt and a sigh and collapsed onto the floor, first on his knees, then slowly falling forward as blood spurted from his open mouth.

"Too bad you didn't stop just before saying that last, you little skinny-as*ed clown." Hawk's voice was quiet, almost conversational, as we both stepped through the open door.

As for me, my ears were ringing like I'd just been caught under the bells of old St. Mary's, and with padre Bing Crosby himself yanking the rope.

In an unconscious gesture, Hawk lifted his gun up to his face as he absently sniffed the residue of cordite still smoking its way out the barrel from the four or five rounds that had just stitched Lil' Squeak's back, starting with his left shoulder and then down diagonally to just above his right hip joint.

But that's Hawk. Never at a loss for words.

And the loads he was packing in his trusty nine millimeter that night were special SEAL-issue low-velocity rounds.

Now, Lil' Squeak's main man Willie could have told his new found snuggle-bunny all about those loads.

But now Squeaky's main man Willie couldn't tell anybody anything.

Because that sterling example of a forty-something "down low people" was draped over the steering wheel of the high jacked delivery van parked out in front of Jackie's house and with his earphones all askew.

And with his pants already strategically disarranged and a small fistfull of amyl nitrate capsules clutched convulsively in his right fist in anticipation of their forthcoming victory party.

I guess yu oculd say it was like that famous English poem, remember? The one about the guy who everybody thought had it all?

Because, just like Richard Cory in the poem, Main Man Willie, too, had a bullet in his head. Although, come to think of it, I guess you could say it was Hawk that put it there.

Anyway, the point here is this:

Major didn't have to worry about Hawk's rounds making it all the way through Lil' Squeak's skinny little body and then hitting him.

Or at least he didn't need to have worried too much.

"Perfect," I said (Parker-230).